Research and Development on Wind Energy Technology
There are several agencies in Thailand, such as Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand (EGAT), Department of Alternative Energy Development and Efficiency (DEDE), and other agencies have conducted research on the use of wind turbines to generate electricity. Most of the works involve using secondary data to calculate and evaluate projects using statistical methodology. Moreover, EGAT has a pilot wind turbine project at Laem Phrom Thep, Phuket with 150-kW Nordtank wind turbines, model NTK 150/25. From the field visit of the Energy for Environment Foundation, it is found that the project’s capacity factor is 14%, with an investment cost of around 82.3 million Baht per MW. Other costs include maintenance cost of 1.67 Baht per unit, electricity generation cost of 9.44 Baht per unit. These costs are high when compared to the power production with fossil fuels. These results are similar to the outcome of the feasibility study of using wind energy to produce electricity in the case of wind farm project on Pha-Ngan Island, Surat Thani [17]. From the financial and economic feasibility of the case study, it is found that the wind farm project is not financially feasible, with a negative NPV and a B/C ratio of less than 1. 65 Apart from the projects mentioned above, there has been a private proposal for Thailand First Wind Farm by Fellow Engineering Co., Ltd. to construct a 360 MW wind farm, whose capacity is equivalent to a 42.11 MW small power producer (SPP) of fossil fuel power plant, operating at 90% load factor. The wind farm is proposed to be located along the coastline from Pak Phanang, Nakhon Si Thammarat to Singhanakhon, Songkhla.